The Corn King and the Spring Queen (11 page)

Outside, the bullfighting was over for that year. The young bulls had been driven, branded and exhausted, to their winter byres: the old ones had been killed and the carcasses taken away for salting. The crowd had almost gone. Dumb and aching in her spirit from all this unanswered anger, Erif Der turned and jumped out of the window. Air and earth were kind to her still; she fell unhurt, but with Tarrik's clouds so wrapped about her eyes that she stumbled into pools of blood and knocked herself against a corner of the hurdles on the well-head. She went home to the Chief's house: for once she felt utterly lost and baffled and unhappy. As she passed the forge, she looked in, and there was Berris leaning over his bench, making a chain of triple rings. He looked up vaguely, his face changing to astonishment as he saw her. Then she ran.

All the household were scurrying about with excitement: Sphaeros had been carried in and was lying on the great bed in the guest-room. She stood in the doorway for a moment, listening to the laboured heave of his breathing. Though it was all his doing, she did not, somehow, hate him. For some time she sat on her own bed, with her hands clasped in her lap. It was odd that Tarrik should be alive after all that afternoon. From minute to minute she was struggling inwardly with her own magic; the clouds were on her so badly that there seemed to be nothing to do but acquiesce and wait till it was over, as it must be some time. She wished Tarrik would come; she wanted fantastically to have somebody's arms to creep into and take shelter in from herself. She groped out for a shirt of his and held on to it, until he should come himself. But instead of the Chief, Eurydice came in, with the maid Apphé behind her.

‘Well, Erif Der,' she said, ‘I think even our Charmantides must see now.'

Erif Der gathered herself up to meet this with some of the lies that had been her daily sport with Eurydice—for months now. But her tongue was slow and she could not help looking at the hunchback maid leering at her from behind. ‘I don't know what you mean,' she said at last, rather wearily, ‘and if I did, I don't care!'

‘But you will care,' said Eurydice, ‘all in time. And how did your dear father like it?'

‘If you think you've found out anything that Tarrik hasn't known for half a year,' said Erif, low and savagely, sitting sideways on the bed, screwing her eyes up, ‘go and tell him! Much he'll thank you for it, you double-clever Eurydice!'

But Eurydice was bending over her, looking down into her clouded, miserable soul. ‘I have seen him looking like this,' said the aunt, ‘yes. … So you can be hurt too: of course. These things are in your nature. Well, child, I am glad to know it.'

Erif Der jumped up and hit out at her; but the same thing happened to her that would have happened to Tarrik with the bulls. Her right hand jerked up with all the fingers out as if something had suddenly pulled at it, and a bluish and buzzing flash blinded her for a second. ‘Oh,' she said, very softly, ‘so it would have been like that.' By now the
clouds had hidden Eurydice; she was left alone inside herself, and there she was thinking that this was what Tarrik had escaped. From behind a thick curtain, she felt that Eurydice was laughing and going out, and that the hunchback maid had gone with her and left the room calm again. For herself, there was nothing to do; she lay down and slept.

Tarrik came in and held a lamp close to her face and looked at her; her shut eyelids screwed and twitched and she whimpered in her sleep. He had meant to wake her, to hit her suddenly in the face so that she would wake in a fright and answer any questions. But he watched a few minutes, thinking it over, and at last decided not to. He felt strong enough now to stay uncertain and not make judgments. He lay down beside her, pulled the blankets over to his side, and he slept too.

Nothing more happened for a few days; the fine, late autumn weather that had come after that storm lasted on, though any evening it might break, for good this time. Eurydice copied poems and embroidered, and re-read Pythagoras without understanding him any more than usual, and smiled to herself, because it seemed to her that what she wanted was going to happen at last, and she believed, of course, that it was good. Erif Der stayed very quietly wherever she happened to be; she had come out of her clouds, and now she was very angry with her magic and would not touch it for the time being. She had left some of her beads in Harn Der's house, but she would not even go and fetch them. She thought they could look after themselves; besides she would rather lose them than see her father or brother again, or even know what they were doing. One day she went and walked along the shore, to the place where the cliffs began to heighten; there was a spring of fresh water there, just at the top of the shingle, icy-cold to her feet, but she liked drinking from it, cheating, as it were, the salt of the sea. There were still occasional timbers being washed up from the ship that had been wrecked; she pulled one up, with horrid naked-looking barnacles dangling from it, and took some of them back, and shoved them in through the window of the forge for Berris to see. But Berris Der did not like them very much; he was after something fresh, something which could not be interpreted through
any natural form. He was not sure what it was, only he knew that it was in some way intellectual, a beauty of the mind rather than the eye.

As for Tarrik, it was as if part of him had suddenly been let loose. He went about with his eyes shining as if he were in love with a new girl: Sphaeros was teaching him philosophy. He had never done anything with that part of his mind before, and he admired himself enormously for the lucid and quick way that it was going. It had set to work on a whole new series of problems, and was tumbling about them like a puppy. Sphaeros found it restful, while he was still lying down and in some pain, to be able to give these very mild first lessons in the unreality of the physical universe, and to watch the disintegrating effect of the discovery that after all tables and chairs are only one sort of reality and that a not very interesting sort, on an intelligent mind which had never considered tables or reality before. Tarrik's barbarian world of colour and smell and solidity broke up deliciously about him into a new freedom, a universe of appearance slithering round his head, a sense of time being within himself, not a mere black and white blinking of nights and days. For nearly a week, he revelled in this, while Sphaeros, gradually getting well, regarded him and waited for the reaction.

It came, of course. His underneath mind had gone on working, following ideas to their conclusion, and then disconcertingly presenting them at odd moments in the shape of disturbing emotions. Tarrik woke up in the middle of the night and found he had lost his grip on everything and was left quite unrelated to life, dithering in the middle of this world of appearance, alone, alone. He turned over and caught hold of Erif Der. She was half awake, alone too, but in a different way. Her world was real enough still; but it had turned against her. She could not get far enough out of her own unhappiness to sympathise with his; wearily she let him kiss her and hug her close and tight. But it was less than no good, a mockery by stupid bodies, when their souls were withdrawn, each into its own void, too far away to make much effort, even to break through into ordinary life again.

They turned away. Erif began to try and recapture part of her world again; it seemed to her that the ring of safety
Sphaeros had unwittingly made round the Chief was not protecting Yersha. After a time she went to sleep, thinking of ways and means. But Tarrik lay quite still and astonished, almost afraid to move in case everything disappeared. If this went on there was no meaning in being Chief of Marob. He clutched for support at his godhead, being Corn King; but that seemed to be gone too; he was not even much interested in wondering what would happen to the crops. At last he quieted down to formulating a set of questions to ask Sphaeros the next morning.

He had forgotten that there was to be a gathering of the soldiers that day, and he had to be dressed up with crown and sword, bronze rings on neck and arms, and a round gold shield like the sun. He was angry and impatient, and knocked down one of his men, who had scratched him with the edge of his breast-plate. It was only when they brought his horse that he calmed down and mounted, and went out through the square seaward door of his house. The men were drawn up between the house and the harbour in a great mass, roughly divided into squares, after the universally admired fashion of the Macedonian phalanx, but without the Macedonian discipline. Almost all had bows, and nearly half were mounted. When he came out they all shouted and waved their bows, and the horses reared and kicked, and everything got into a tangle. He scowled at them, considering that they must at least be treated as real, and gave orders, cursed them or praised them, and had up the headmen and captains and told them what they were doing wrong, sharply and definitely, as befitted the Chief. They loved him for being like that, and thought the curse was well off him; at least most of them did. But Harn Der had many friends, and they had come to certain conclusions and had decided to stay by them. Yellow Bull had brought his men to the gathering, and had come up with the other captains to see the Chief. Tarrik caught sight of him, rather at the back, and suddenly called him forward. ‘How is the road?' he said; ‘I am not forgetting it, Yellow Bull. Give me time.' Yellow Bull thanked him awkwardly. Nobody else seemed to be thinking of his road; it always made him feel a curious love for the Chief when he talked of it, as if they were sharing some secret.

Sphaeros was trying to write; but the Chief's house was
not a really quiet place, except in Eurydice's rooms, which he was always doing his best to keep out of. When Tarrik came clamouring in, lie sighed and gave it up in despair. ‘Yes,' he said at last, ‘this is the fear of Chaos, which is the first step to knowledge. I can cure you of fear.'

‘Can you?' said Tarrik; ‘it is something real after all?'

‘It must be, or there would be nothing to know. Unless there were some standard, one could not even know that one does know. It is certain that the mirror image is less true than the thing itself, that the straightness of the rod is more proper to it than the crookedness we see in it when we look at it through water; so there must be degrees of unreality, until at last one comes down to certain appearances which are so undistorted that one may take them to be sure. It is these that seize upon the mind, and are in turn seized upon and turned into security: the Kataleptike Phantasia. They build the wall against unreality and the fearful place where a man may lose himself.'

‘Yes,' said Tarrik, twisting a pen between his fingers until it broke, ‘and what then?'

‘If you have time and will listen,' said Sphaeros, ‘I will try to explain.' Then he showed Tarrik how it all hung together, this fear of unreality and a rushing on nowhither without reason, and uncertainty, and unfulfilled desire for happiness that in itself is unobtainable; and he showed how man's will may be weaned from desire and folly, and made to go the way of nature, of things-as-they-are, not crossing the purpose of life, but going always with that reason that governs the movements of the stars and all the universe—through your own helping making yourself one with God.

‘Yes,' said Tarrik suddenly, ‘that is how I help the sun to grow the corn!'

Then Sphaeros spoke of the wills of kings, and how they, above all, should follow the good; and he talked of choice and duty, and the ways that are always open before any action. And he told Tarrik stories of kings, the wise and the unwise, and what came to their kingdoms. So they went on, day after day.

Tarrik found he was quite able to split himself into two people; one a Greek, who was an interested, if not
always consistent, Stoic, with a vast amount of moral and philosophic curiosity which had never been satisfied before; and the other a barbarian god-king, who made the flax and wheat grow in a very small place called Marob, which nobody had ever heard of except wholesale merchants and ships' captains, whose beginnings had been odd and dubious and something to do with his dead father and a ceremonial feast, and whose end was better unthought of for the moment. This was all very amusing. But Tarrik was distinctly aware of Harn Der and the possibilities of something unpleasant. However he was fairly clear that his luck was back now—if all went well at Plowing Eve. And he had given orders to his guard, whom he knew to be faithful, to follow not too far behind when he went out. If it came to anything open, he backed himself against Harn Der and half the Council. As to Erif— well, she was queer and unanswering nowadays. He began to look about for something better, but only half-heartedly; for the moment his mind was not on women.

And then a small trading-ship came into harbour. She was a squat, patch-sailed creature, that every one knew; she used to trade up and down the coast, even in winter, from one small harbour to another, never getting far out, or taking risks. She was going south now, and would probably fetch up at Byzantium in about a month if the weather was possible. Sphaeros said: ‘I must go.' And he went down to arrange with the captain.

Tarrik knew not only that Sphaeros must go, but also that he would. He did not say anything at once, nor did he follow his first impulse—to have the captain strangled quietly, or the ship sunk. He considered what was the Good, and when Sphaeros came back from the harbour he said: ‘I think I might go to Hellas again.'

‘Why?' said Sphaeros.

‘In case there are more men like you,' said Tarrik, and the philosopher, in spite of himself, felt a curious glow of pleasure at the way of Nature here.

‘But how can you leave your kingdom and your people, Charmantides?' he asked.

The Chief seemed to think it not too difficult. ‘I shall give my powers to two others,' he said; ‘the power over my people to one, and the power over seed-time and growing-time to a second. And I shall be back by summer. I want—'
he said, suddenly shy and looking away from Sphaeros, ‘I want to see Kleomenes and Sparta!'